Snooping around could turn tricky

July 28, 2002|By Clarence Page. Clarence Page is a member of the Tribune's editorial board.

WASHINGTON — Hearing U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft defend the government's new Operation TIPS program on Capitol Hill, I marvel at his ability to make an idea that might be quite useful sound quite sinister.

That thought occurs to me as Ashcroft sounds surprised at the backlash that has greeted Operation TIPS, the newly proposed Terrorism Information and Prevention System program.

Developed by the U.S. Department of Justice in coordination with other agencies, TIPS is one of five components of the Citizen Corps that President Bush announced in his State of the Union address in January.

TIPS "will involve millions of American workers who, in the daily course of their work, are in a unique position to see potentially unusual or suspicious activity in public places," the citizencorps.gov Web site explains.

But to many of us, TIPS sounds a lot like an effort to enlist all of the nation's nosy neighbors into President Bush's "war on terror." (That's what the president has been calling it lately, as if the previously announced "war on terrorism" is now being expanded to shut down future "Halloween" movie sequels.)

As word about TIPS has gotten around, it has sparked a backlash across the political spectrum. The American Civil Liberties Union has been all but drowned out by the alarm sounded among conservative Republicans like Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia or Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah.

On July 18, House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) added language to the House version of the Homeland Security Bill to prohibit the Justice Department from setting up Operation TIPS.

To help salvage the program, Ashcroft assured senators that TIPS will serve only as a "clearinghouse" for information that will be passed to all appropriate law enforcement agencies, each of which has well-established policies on the handling of information.

But details of TIPS still are being worked out and that, dear reader, is part of the problem. I don't think TIPS would have aroused nearly as much suspicion had the administration let the public in on it sooner.

A program this deeply intrusive in the daily lives of Americans should be openly discussed and debated, perhaps with town hall meetings. Instead, the administration has shown an obsession for secrecy, which only arouses suspicion.

When I first heard about TIPS, I was reminded of Fidel Castro's Cuba, which I visited for the first time in June. One of the other American journalists with whom I was traveling remarked on our third day in Havana, "Have you noticed how this police state does not seem to have that many police?"

"That's the joy of an efficient police state," I said. "They don't need a lot of police spying on the people because they put the people to work spying on each other."

In Cuba, local chapters of the Committee in Defense of the Revolution prevent crime the same way neighborhood watch programs do in American neighborhoods. Criminals abhor a big audience. Police can't be everywhere, so the more eyes and ears they have in a community, the easier it is to spot and report unusual activity, including criminal activity.

But, of course, Cuba's CDRs also report to higher authorities any activities of citizens in or outside of their own homes that seem inconsistent with the principles of the revolution.

CDRs are not the American way. Americans have known for years that we could cut crime considerably by imposing a police state, but we also have decided that the price was not worth it.

Is it worth it now? I doubt it. But that does not mean the federal government cannot build a more efficient system for those of us who do spot something truly suspicious to report the information, the same way local anti-crime efforts do.

Instead of building an elaborate network of volunteer spies, the government might simply publish a toll-free phone number for all of us to use. This line will, of course, need careful screening of calls to separate legitimate tips from the trash. But unlike the more elaborate TIPS plan, a simple hotline would not be a radical departure from the sort of crime-watch programs Americans already have.